RF Nomad

Voltage Controlled Shortwave Receiver Eurorack Module

RF. Radio Frequency. The stuff that Marconi made famous. Or maybe it made Marconi famous. Either way, it's not just for listening to hockey games anymore. EurekaSound is proud to partner with Evaton Technologies to bring you the RF Nomad, a voltage-controlled sideband shortwave receiver Eurorack module.

The RF Nomad adds the squealy, squelchy, noisy, unpredictable vintage sounds of shortwave radio to your modular. But this is no ordinary shortwave; it's been designed to be extra noisy, extra squealy, extra gritty, and just downright nasty. No built-in output filtering means that a rich spectrum of harmonic content is available on the audio output jack. Audio levels can be driven to distortion. CV control lets you add your own creative spin on sound design.

But, the RF Nomad adds a twist: The tuning is voltage controlled. Sure, when you were a kid, you discovered you could make spacy noises on Papa's shortwave by slowly turning the tuning dial. But just how fast could you twist that dial? Faster than an audio-rate LFO? Hardly. Voltage controlled tuning means that the RF Nomad will let you explore sounds you never imagined you could get out of a shortwave receiver.

With free USPS Priority shipping to the U.S.A.(Add $30 USD for USPS Priority International shipping)

FAQ

How do I transmit to my RF Nomad?

The answer is "Buy 2 Nomads" :-)

Get or borrow a second RF Nomad, and place it in your rack near the first (or just in the same rack -- see the video below). Drape the antenna from your first Nomad over the circuit board of the second Nomad. You'll need to leave a gap to feed the antenna inside the rack, or, in my case, the top of my case hinges open, so I just open up the top and drape it down that way.

Now, tune both Nomads to the same frequency. The easy way to do this is to twist the tuning knob of the "transmitter" nomad back and forth, while slowly sweeping the tuning knob of the "receiver" Nomad until you hear the twisty bit coming from the transmitter.

If you've done the L5 frequency mod, you'll need to carefully get BOTH Nomads in the same range or they won't hear each other.

Once you can "hear" the transmitter, now feed an audio signal into the CV Input on the "transmitter". Increase the CV Amount on the transmitter, and listen for distorty, astronaut-like audio coming out the receiver. It's not perfect, because technically you are "transmitting" on FM, and the Nomad is expecting to decode Sideband. But, it's a useful effect anyway.